Sarah Gabriel (3 page)

“She’s a clever vixen, who has turned some soldiers’ hearts and turned the rest on their ear.”

“Yes, sir. I suppose that’s true.” The officer glanced down.

“Dismissed, Lieutenant. But first, allow me to replace your supply of cocoa powder.” Alec stood. “My aunt posts tins to me often. Far too often.” He indicated a small table that held cups, spoons, a silver pot, and a stack of black-and-gold tins of tea, cocoa, and coffee. Choosing three tins, he handed them to Heron.

“Thank you. That’s very generous.”

“Not at all. I prefer stronger drink, but my aunt will not post whiskey.” He grinned.

Heron laughed, nodded his thanks, and left the tent.

Alec returned to the desk. The laundress pushed the used bed linens in the basket, then picked up the load and prepared to leave. He looked up, and again something tugged at his memory—had he seen her before?

He studied the concealing drape of the plaid, the uptilt nose, the curve of her cheek. Just a bonny Highland girl, he thought, with a bonny shape hidden under all that clothing. She did not look at him, and the notion passed from his head. She was nothing like the clever wanton in the descriptions.

He folded into his chair and took up the broadsheet illustration once again. “Katie Hell,” he murmured,
“you’ve tied a few knots in the British military fabric, lass.”

The laundress walked past him, basket in her hands, heading for the doorway. Again a feeling nudged at him. “Miss,” he said.

She stopped, back turned. “
Oiche mhar,
” she answered.

“Oik-uh var,” he repeated, his accent stiff with disuse. “Not ‘good night’ just yet, Miss. Come here, if you please.”

K
ate’s heart sank as she faced the tent flaps. Dear God, did Captain Fraser remember seeing her in London?

He would need only a small leap of reason to realize that a Scotswoman who had appeared at the king’s London court, then turned up in a governmental officer’s tent posing as a Highland laundress, must be an
intriguante
—and might be Katie Hell, the spy wanted by the military. If he asked Lieutenant Heron or Colonel Grant to identify her, the ruse would be over, and she and her kinsmen, too, would be in grave danger.

She kept her head turned away, knowing she could not allow the captain to recognize her as the lady from St. James’s Palace.

Upon entering the tent, she had seen with sudden shock that the captain was actually the Highland swordsman she had seen in London. The other man was the young lieutenant she had met weeks ago. Yet neither man paid much attention to her as she had moved cautiously around the tent. For weeks she had come and gone in the camp on the pretense of doing laundry, which she delivered to some local cousins who did the actual work for the soldiers.

Even now her heartbeat quickened foolishly in his presence. Months ago, she had learned that the Highland swordsman was a Fraser from a family of tea and cocoa importers, a younger son with an officer’s commission, not uncommon for sons of wealthy merchant families. Certain she would never see him again, she had nonetheless dreamed of another meeting and acquired a passion for Fraser chocolate.

But she had never dreamed of encountering him like this. The man could have her arrested. Had he asked about her that day in London, as she had done? Had he learned her name?

“Miss,” Fraser said firmly. “Come here, please.”

“Oiche mhar,”
she repeated, hand on the tent flap. Her knees had begun to tremble, and she did not turn around.

She had taken great risk in coming to his tent to search for some vital documents for her Jacobite kinsmen. She had learned that the new captain had the lists of recently arrested Highland prisoners—and her kinsmen needed that list. Even now, one of her cousins waited outside in the darkness and the rain to get the paper, and to spirit her away to safety.

“Miss, come here, please,” he repeated in a stern tone.

Running would only raise his suspicions. Turning slightly, she ducked her head under the shadow of her plaid shawl.

“Shirt,” Fraser said, plucking at his sleeve. “
Leinen
?”

“
Leine,
” she corrected in surprise.

“My Gaelic is not what it was when I was a lad,” he explained. “My
leine
needs laundering, if you will take it.” As he spoke, he undid the buttons of his waistcoat.

Kate pointed to the garments folded on the bed, careful to answer in rapid Gaelic. “Your clean shirts are there.”

“
Leine
,” he repeated.

“For a Highlander,” she went on, “you do not know your own language very well.” He blinked at her and smiled vaguely. Then he lifted his shirt high to remove it. “
Ach
, but you are a beautiful Highland man,” Kate murmured.

She moved close and stretched out her arm for the shirt, which he quickly stripped over his head, then tossed toward her.

Catching the garment, she stared, stunned. He stood bare to the waist in lanternlight, taut and beautiful as a god. His wide shoulders and chest were smoothly muscled above the wrapped plaid draped around his taut abdomen. His shining brown-gilt hair slipped loose from its ribbon to brush his shoulders. He looked more like a proud Celtic warrior than a loathsome king’s man.

Again, as in London, she felt the strange effect he
had on her, powerful and somewhat entrancing. She could barely think.

Holding the shirt, she spun away, and her basket knocked against the table. Papers fluttered to the floor.

“Blast,” Fraser muttered, and bent below the level of the table to fetch the fallen pages.

Kate took that moment to quickly scan the papers on his desk: the dreadful broadsheet depicting the “Highland Wench” as a virago or worse; Fraser’s interview notes; a few long lists written in a clerk’s hand. Those pages must be what she needed.

She reached out, but Fraser stood again. Kate whipped her hand away so quickly that next she tipped over a china cup perched at the edge of the table. Liquid—strong hot tea, by the look of it—spilled over the papers, soaking the broadsheet. She snatched at the page just as Fraser did, and it tore.

As he grabbed at the other papers, Kate dropped her basket and snatched a linen towel to sop up the spill. Fraser took the cloth from her to swipe at the rapidly blurring ink, swearing under his breath as he did so.

More flustered now, Kate righted the cup and set it on a table that held the silver pot and tins. The pot contained steaming tea, so she refilled the cup, wondering frantically how to get a closer look at the lists that Fraser was salvaging from the mishap she had caused.

With the other officers she had encountered, all she needed most of the time was to let her charm work its magic through soft conversation, smiles, flattery, a laugh, a touch on the arm. More often than not the men
fell into a dreamy daze, particularly if they had already been imbibing. Then she usually found a moment to look through papers and slip important pages into her pocket.

She could not risk taking time to use her natural magic on this man. Not only might he remember her from the London court, but she had the sense that her fairy gift would not work with him as easily as it had on others.

She must find the pages and get away quickly. Slipping a hand in her skirt pocket, she touched the glass vial tucked there, which held an herbal sleeping infusion. She had sometimes used it in officers’ drinks to protect herself from their advances.

Slowly she opened the little vial with her fingers. A swift glance had already showed her that Ian Cameron’s name was on one of the pages that Fraser was holding. Ian had been arrested indeed, and her brother and kinsmen needed to know where he was being kept. Finding Cameron, Kate knew, would not only save the man. It would also prevent the government from learning his secret, which could protect the lives and the welfare of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Highland Jacobites.

Fraser stood then, and Kate set the cup on the desk without a chance to add the herbal drops. He glanced at her in silence. Kate turned away, heart pounding, having missed the chance to dose his tea.

Another choice remained to her, a method she had heard about but never tried. The very thought made her uneasy.

According to MacCarran family lore, those who inherited the gift of charm from their fairy ancestress also had the power of throwing a glamourie, a spell of enchantment that could bedazzle another, suspending awareness and even time itself.

She had never tried it, relying only on natural-born charm and good luck. Unsure how she could even throw a spell, she did not honestly believe herself capable of it, despite family legend. As a young girl she had found it hard enough to accept that she had an engaging effect that went beyond the ordinary. Putting that to good use to help her clan was well enough. Spellcasting was another matter entirely.

Several years ago, when her family still lived together happily at Duncrieff Castle, her grandmother and aunts had been experts on the family legends. They had cautioned Kate to cast a glamourie only if she understood its power. Certainly she could never understand it—others in the family knew the MacCarran lore far better than she did. An old, enormous manuscript, its pages added over centuries, contained the family’s fairy and magical traditions, but the thing was a daunting piece of scholarship. Kate had scarcely opened its pages.

Besides, she felt sure that the MacCarran glamourie would never work on Fraser. The man did not seem the least bit bedazzled by her charm.

In fact, he seemed annoyed, scowling under lowered brows as he gathered the scattered papers. Kate had rarely faced that sort of reaction from men—in fact, not since her father had once caught her looking at a book
in his library, a collection of Italian engravings showing naked couples joined in all sorts of interesting positions. To others, Kate could do no wrong, a quality her mother claimed did her daughter no good at all.

While Fraser was occupied, Kate took a chance and emptied the glass vial into the fresh tea. Bitter-tasting but otherwise harmless, the herbs produced sound sleep. Finding a bowl of fine sugar, she spooned a healthy serving into the cup.

Handing him the cup, she felt uncomfortably like a spider spinning out its web to catch its unsuspecting prey.

He accepted it. “Thank you…
tapadh leat,
” he translated.

His slight Gaelic gave her a sense of quick guilt. Most of the officers she had met were puppets in red coats, Whigs all, and as a Highlander with a Jacobite father who had died in exile, she had good reason to dislike them. Every one she encountered had become infatuated with her to some degree, and some had been cloying or lusty fools, easy to dislike and dismiss.

But Captain Fraser was none of that. Even in the coat of a red soldier, even knowing he was not quite the Highland warrior she had once imagined him to be, he still made her blood quicken.

Oh please just drink it,
she thought, fighting the urge to snatch it away from him.
Drink it and forgive me.

He raised the cup in salute. “You’re a clumsy wee thing, Miss Washerwoman, but a bonny lass for all that, and I hope you’re better at the laundry than the housekeeping.” He drank.

Her sense of guilt increased sharply, but she leaned down to fuss with the laundry in the basket. His discarded shirt still smelled of him—traces of warm comfort, of strength and manliness. She picked up the basket and moved toward the tent entrance, then glanced back.

He sat in the chair, sipping as he sorted the papers. Lifting a hand to his head, he shoved his fingers through thick, wavy hair, gold threading through darker strands.

Just as she left the tent, Kate saw him tip his head on his hand as he studied the page, as if he felt fatigued.

Quelling the feeling of guilt, she stepped away and glanced around anxiously at the shapes of the tents in growing darkness.

As she ran forward, a figure emerged from the gloom—a tall Highlander by his shape. Kate gasped, then rushed toward her cousin. Allan MacCarran caught her by the shoulder and pulled her out of sight to a private spot.

“What happened?” he murmured in Gaelic. “I was listening in case you might need me—you were in there a while.”

“All is well,” Kate whispered.

“Did you find the list of arrests, then?”

“I saw it but had no chance to get it. The officer is still awake. Allan, listen,” she went on urgently. “He saw me months ago, when I was in London last. I gave him the herbal infusion, but it is too risky for me to go back. He could easily realize that I am involved in espionage, being both a lady and a laundress. He’s not a stupid man, this one.”

Allan shook his head. “You can charm him as you’ve done with all the others. That tincture will put him out cold. Search out the pages and get away fast as you can.”

She panicked suddenly, torn between an urge to flee the camp and an inexplicable yearning to return to Fraser’s tent. The pull of the strange and wonderful magic he exuded over her was strong—and she knew better than anyone the irony of that.

“We’ve got to have that list,” Allan said. “We must discover where the redcoats are keeping Ian Cameron since his arrest. Your brother’s friend knows where that Spanish cache is hidden, and we must get Ian out before the English can force information out of him. He was taken down before he could meet your brother. We’d best get to him quickly.”

“I understand,” she replied. Although she did not know Ian Cameron personally, she was aware that his involvement was essential to her kinsmen’s covert work. “But if this captain catches me out, and recognizes me—it’s too much chance to take.”

“A few moments only, and you’ll be gone from there,” Allan assured her. “Cameron knows where those missing weapons are, and if the red soldiers should find out the location before we do, the insurrection will suffer. This means a good deal to your clan and kin, lass.”

Kate sighed. Her loyalty to her clan and to her brother was unquestioned. She would do anything for Robert, chief of the MacCarrans of Duncrieff. If he considered Ian Cameron a steadfast friend, and this mis
sion imperative to the Cause, that was more than enough reason to do whatever she could.

“Fine,” she whispered. “I’ll go back.”

Allan turned with her. “I’ll be just here. Call out if you need me.”

A chill ran through her, but she hurried back to the tent through drizzling rain. Pushing her way inside, she knotted the ties behind her to seal out the world.

Setting the basket by the door, she approached cautiously. Captain Fraser rested his head on his arms, eyes closed, and seemed asleep. The infusion had finally taken hold. Coming closer, Kate looked at him curiously.

He was tall and large-boned, with an almost leonine elegance in face and form. His profile was classically handsome, partly obscured by a sweep of thick hair, deep brown and sun-streaked. She noted taut skin and good bones, straight dark brows over closed eyes fringed with dark lashes, an aristocratic nose that sloped toward the tender curve of his mouth.

His eyes opened, and she saw a flash of dark blue. “Ugh,” he muttered, and raised his head, groggy as a drunkard.

Regret rushed through her—he had not attacked her as some other officers had tried, yet she had dealt him this repercussion. He sat up, batting an arm out, clumsily sweeping papers, inkpot, and the china cup off the table. As he stood, stumbling, the chair tipped back and fell over.

Kate bent to fetch the broken cup, setting the pieces
aside. The potion she had given Fraser was strong, yet even the full vial had not taken him down completely. He was still alert, though weakened.

As she straightened, he grabbed her upper arms and pulled her toward him. Alarmed, Kate pushed at his chest, and her arisaid slipped from her head, dragging with it the white cap pinned over her hair, exposing her face and bright golden hair to his full view.